Financial reform a winner for Dems?

Who knew.

The Democrats understand that they have a winning issue right now. Goldman Sachs is making money. Bonuses are back, if they ever went away. The same folks who made obscene amounts of money taking risks that taxpayers ended up covering are still making obscene amounts of money, even as they fight against regulation that would try to prevent another collapse by providing stricter oversight and greater protection for consumers.
...
The Republicans' unwillingness to even have an open debate about financial reform makes them look like Wall Street really did get its money's worth from them. Sure, the Democrats get money from the bankers, too. (Who else can afford these $35,000 dinners, after all?) But the big question is not who gave what to whom, but what they got for it.

So sayeth Susan Estrich.

My own take is that we ought to let the market work. Let the fleeced investors, and the financial institutions, live or die on their own. No government interference. The problem isn't too much pain. The problem is: Wall Street still hasn't been properly spanked. Too cushioned to feel the sting of their own losses.

America is not Wall Street: We're not all in this together. The weakness of your norms can sicken, but not defeat the people in this country. When the true demographic storm comes, as the Boomer generation begins to cash in their chits, and the entitlement bills come due as the entitlees list grows..., the financial fallout will be weathered better in some areas of the country than others.

Freshwater richness v. resource scarcity.

California stands or falls on her own population and promises; Arizona enforces the laws as she sees fit. As order crumbles and institutional interests weaken, there's no better time to decentralize and act on what works.

It's that little light showing the way ahead, peaking out from all this institutional rubble and human rot that inspires me. First November. Then 2012. Soon enough we'll be in our 2020's and 30's -- looking back one hundred years, and understanding that maybe we ought to just go with what brung us thus far...


ADDED:
An Unwelcome Endorsement
Jonathan H. Adler • April 27, 2010 10:07 pm

According to The Hill, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein endorsed the financial regulation reform legislation during his Senate testimony today.

“I’m generally supportive,” Blankfein told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Wall Street will benefit from the bill because it will make the market safer, Blankfein said.

“The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself,” he said. “The biggest risk is risk financial institutions have with each other.”

I don’t think this says much about the merits of the legislation, particularly because Blankfein also confessed not to know all of the bill’s details, but I suspect it could affect the politics.

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Enough breakfast thoughts of tomorrow. So many seeds still to be planted today!